Pinterest: signs of staying power

Everyone’s favorite “it” startup, Pinterest, got a slap on the wrist last week for sneakily snagging affiliate fees from users’ links. But there is no mistaking the social curation site’s growth and momentum. Will Pinterest be a fad that flashes and burns, as Turntable.fm shows signs of doing, or will it end up a midsize link sharer like Digg or Reddit? It is worth examining Pinterest’s growth, usage, influence and money-making potential for startup lessons and marketing opportunities.

Pinterest’s audience is a little concentrated — on a desirable young female demographic — but I wouldn’t call it a niche. It is well beyond the early adopter, Silicon Valley crowd that still dominates Quora. Of course, Pinterest faces the risk of faddishness, but it has at least a little guaranteed user lock-in. It takes a long time to kill a photo site, as Flickr’s survival in the face of Facebook demonstrates. But users may deem a group of collected images less valuable than personal photos.

Smart tech implementations

Social curation is a real phenomenon, but not everyone wants to curate. Pinterest enables easy off-site sharing with a simple browser plug-in, even before it has established a Facebook- or Twitter-like “pin this” distribution network. No doubt over time Pinterest will display Pareto principle–style 80/20 distribution of viewer to sharer. But Pinterest encourages passive usage with friend- and topic-following at a user’s first experience along with regular reinforcement.

Pinterest has been smart in how it uses Facebook. Its Facebook log-in and app uses Open Graph auto-sharing features to juice demand for invitations. Yet pinning images into “boards” helps encourage Pinterest usage on its own site rather than just within the Facebook news feed. There is some talk of Pinterest APIs, but the company hasn’t articulated what you could call a platform strategy yet. Still, Pinterest has demonstrated wise tech moves that will gain it a bigger audience, induce usage and exploit Facebook.

I will disagree with Forrester interactive marketing analyst Darika Ahrens, who says marketers should ignore Pinterest in 2012. On the contrary, they should get on board quickly, before Pinterest starts charging for company pages. The company may never do so — neither Facebook nor Google do — but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is considering it. It should charge media companies and build out paid pages for brands. Because although you might think its visual displays would be extremely brand-advertiser-friendly, those advertisers may shy away without guaranteed placement and safety from potential copyright violations. They would be more comfortable paying for their own space, especially if Pinterest would spend some of its $27 million in funding on audience analysis services.

Though Pinterest hasn’t talked much publicly, its actions reveal a smart startup with staying power. Its growth is working across a broad audience, and its tech choices enhance that growth. And Pinterest is starting to show some power in driving traffic to other sites. A little emphasis on marketing support could add dollars alongside its affiliate revenues.

What’s fascinating about Pinterest is that the concept of social curation isn’t new. You mention Digg & Reddit even before that del.icio.us was aggregating URLs and with the recent redesign post acquisition it’s now even more visual at delicious.com and once could say that Pinterest “stacks” is essentially the same as a Pinterest “board”

Pinterest has been around since 2009 but has only recently burst onto the scene. I would love to hear the story about how the service signed up it’s initial members and how they grew without the help of the usual early adopter social connectors.

Pinterest is hardly a fad, in as much Pin boards never were. its here to stay although they should make some basic changes like allowing users to rearrange the pin board tiles as well as allowing users to post text only notes.

there is a HUGE unmet gap for users to collect, organize and curate the information into the topics they are most interested in. Blogs paved the way, Tumblr made it easier and Pinterest upped it a notch by realizing that PinBoard presentation was missing from the market.

Once someone goes PINTEREST will be unlikely they switch unless they get usability elsewhere which is superior but Pinterest should be able to keep on the innovation curve.

My girfriend uses Pinterest extensively and has spent dozens of hours on her boards – will she move them, unlikely. Also the addiction has not worn off and she has forgetten FB for posting albums !!